Gender Analysis: Women In Films, an Essay fanfic - FictionPress.com

• Gender Analysis: Women In Films, an Essay fanfic - FictionPress.com

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  • All women
  • are diverse
  • due to factors such as their experiences living in different societies, under different religions, times, their private lives and the public sphere, which all go to creating the individual woman and also man.
  • most societies are patriarchal where the males hold most of the power.
  • All the women from the two films, with the exception of Claire Donnelly, have something in common – their private sphere. All these women are comforted and nurtured in their private lives.
  • Vera Drake and Claire Donnelly both live in post-war 1950s; a time men were called heroes for defending their country. When the soldiers arrived back home from the war, women, like the rest of the country who didn’t actively help the country in the time of crisis, felt like they owed something to the men who fought. In my opinion, this was one of the main reasons why women were so submissive in those times
  • It is not their fault either, it’s the way that they were brought up, and it was the way their parents were brought up – gender construction - their mothers and fathers were roles models and gender socialisation created in them the acceptance of females as nurturing, submissive, domesticated and belonging at home whilst males were intellectual, aggressive, dominating and providing the economic support for the family.
  • There is one common bond that links all the female characters in Vera Drake and If These Walls Could Talk together; they are all very similar in the way that they cherish their family ties. Vera Drake and Barbara Barrows are both mothers and love their family very much; running their household in a cheerful, efficient manner. This is what has been reinforced through their own families and the society they live in that women should be happiest in the home and not want for anymore.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

A brief discussion

Race In America/Media Representation

Blacks fights back in films.

In the western context

GENDER, RACE, AND MEDIA REPRESENTATION

Issues of Representation

The Representation of Women in Comic Books, Post WWII Through the Radical 60’s.

This article focuses on the time period 1940s to the 1960s regarding the evolution of famous female comic book characters. The author uses the examples of

1) Wonder Woman – Diana Prince
2) Catwoman – Selina Kyle
3) The Invisible Girl/Woman – Sue Storm
4) The Wasp – Jan Van Dyne
5) Batgirl – Barbara Gordon.

She mentions that comic books serve not only as an entertainment but as a reflection of American culture. This is because comic book characters are depicted in visual and contextual extremes that serve as representations of common stereotypes. This in turn reflects the contemporary American social structure.

The stereotypical roles are of wife, mother or secretary and she uses the social role theory to differentiate ascribed roles (given by others) and aquired roles (earned by oneself). She also mentions that in the past before the late 1960s, female characters "were usually given very few roles with limited upward mobility" but this has changed after 1960s due to civil rights movement, second wave feminism and the sexual revolution. Man on the other hand, held roles that are diverse and typically held "roles are diverse and typically prestigious."

The author also implied that creators usually take cues from their social environment about the roles considered socially acceptable for women.

Question: What are the possible reasons behind why creators take cues from their social environment to create their characters?

Strange/puzzling/interesting phenomena: I found it interesting that characters like Wonder Women gained empowerment but later was reverted back to traditional roles. I find this phenomena similar to the concept of evolution to an extent that it reverts back to devolution. Yet, does this mean that it is bad for society? In my opinion, not necessarily so. This is very similar to the arguments for technology (Utopian Vs Dystopian, Progress Vs Regress...etc).

Gender Identity in Manga

Shojo and Adult Women: A Linguistic Analysis of Gender Identity in Manga (Japanese Comics)

How the use of japanese language becomes an indication of the feminine identity.

Archive for Media Issues and Debates

Reniermedia’s Weblog

This article explains terms in the media and introduces certain theories and examples to illustrate the phenomenon that is happening in the media. Basically, in regards to representations portrayed via the media. He introduced 3 different view about representation:

1) The Reflective view: when we represent something, we are taking its true meaning and trying to create a replica of it in the mind of our audience — like a reflection.

2) The Intentional view: This is the opposite of the Reflective idea. The process of representation is the person doing the representing. For example, an attractive person endorsing the product to imply it is attractive too.

3) The Constructionist view: a representation can never just be the truth or the version of the truth that someone wants you to hear since that is ignoring your ability as an individual to make up your own mind and the influences of the society that you live in on the way that you do so.

Question: Which view do you favor the most?

Strange/puzzling/interesting phenomena: I am puzzled by the emergence of these different views.

News Representation in the Media (5)

A parody for you. Criticising on how the media always exaggerates news. Something different from the gender issues I have been blogging. As you can see...i am quite a feminist. =X

Gender Representation in the Media (4)

This is basically a summary of all the previous post. How women are portrayed.
1) Home makers
2) Sexual objects
3) Skinny, beautiful
4) Clear complexion

If you are not: then the advertisements will imply that you should buy a certain product, lose weight to acheive that "ideal" recommended by the advertisement.

Gender Representation in the Media (3)

Question: Do you think that fashion advertisements are portraying too much of provocativeness?

I bet there are many reasons why these advertisements are used. Basically, they need to CAPTURE ATTENTION and in order to do that, the content of the ad must be something out of the box. I studied about theories regarding advertisements and basically such images are used to create a certain mood or image of the brand. However, these fashion industries should consider the repercussions of too many of these ads being used as it creates stereotypes of women.

Strange/puzzling/interesting phenomena: Despite the portrayal of these supposedly crude images which in a way puts women is a bad light, I am actually attracted to it. I feel puzzled over such a feeling because I should be against such portrayals of women but I cannot stop myself from being attracted to these images.

Gender Representation in the media (2)

You all should have a look at this. That guy who is dubbing over the movie and the one making the video is furnie~(i mean funny). Basically he is just trying to prove his point that women are a weaker gender and they aim to be like men. In movies, they try to struggle but the bottom line is they always end up being vulnerable.

Question: Is this a form of parody?

I certainly think so. Despite this being a form of entertainment, what the uploader was trying to share is his view points about gender issues in movies. He just chose a more entertaining way to present the idea. After all, YouTube is about sharing videos and by making it interesting, it will increase the viewership and in turn increase the exposure of the uploader's ideas.

Strange/puzzling/interesting phenomena: I am impressed these user generated videos especially the originality in it and the time spent on it just to showcase their ideas.

Gender Representation in the media (1)

This is the first post to this blog. In last week's tutorial, our group discussed about the selection of topic and we have decided to use the topic "visual, film studies and issues of representation". So given this broad category, I was more interested in the representation of females in the media. This is where I start to search for videos related to this topic and I chose YouTube as the platform since it is the leader in online video sharing.



Ok so basically after viewing this video.

Question: I am like why do commercials keep portraying women as house wives?

Like they do all the chores while men just sit around. However, we definitely must consider the cutting of these commercials making the final product look bias. There also must be a consideration of other factors as well because commercials in the first place aim to achieve a certain effect on its viewers. Therefore, the stereotyping of women could be intentionally added to serve the purpose of promoting the product.

Strange/puzzling/interesting phenomena: It was fairly interesting to read the comments by others about the video. There were criticisms and even people making comments to stereotype men. Those who made the comments regarding stereotypical men are most likely to be females. Maybe as a form of revenge?